


Buttons

by ticktockclockwork



Category: Coraline (2009), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Lots Of Sad, M/M, Post Reichenbach, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticktockclockwork/pseuds/ticktockclockwork





	Buttons

The choice had, at one point in time, been very clear. But now he was so very not sure.

“And I can stay here?” He asks with a shaky voice, touching the piercing tip of the needle, deciding just how terrible it would be to have his eyes sewn up for good.

“Forever and ever, John.”

The voice is right, but the smile is not. The eyes aren’t either but John thinks he might be able to live with that. The Others are so very wrong, inside out puppets with tangled up strings. They smile with stitched lips and klink and klunk in the oddest of manners. But they say his name as if they actually remember it and for a moment he is not so alone.

Here he is recognized, not from a rooftop in a last goodbye, but from the kitchen table where Sherlock offers him a cuppa with a smile that makes his stomach turn. He drinks it all and asks for another.

They have cases two blocks over but never much further. John can see the colors fading but he doesn’t question. Sherlock’s button eyes turn away when the lines of the world break up into the unknown and lead John back home, burlap hands feeling so much like the stars of the universe running through his fingertips.

He’ll take burlap over body bags.

Mrs. Hudson is queer, with a touch to the lips that are always smiling. He wonders often if this is her, if she said yes, too. Her buttons are nearly plum. They look awful. He hates them. But she cleans the flat and makes sure no threads are ever seen so he doesn’t complain.

He should. Perhaps that’s why he’s asking.

“Will it hurt?”

“Not forever.”

He doubts the truth in that. But he left his doubts at Angelo’s with his candle and his cane. Right now all he sees is Sherlock stretched out on their couch, fingers perched under his chin, nails tapping in an uncommonly perturbed gesture.

He wasn’t thinking. He was waiting.

Tink, tink.

John touches the tip of the needle with his finger again and pricks the skin.

He pushes it deeper to make sure it hurts for a while.

“Okay.”

Sherlock smiles and John knows the detective was wrong all along. Moriarty was never the spider.

He sets his hands atop the little box. He holds it tight. He doesn’t want to drop it. He switches places with Sherlock on the couch, presses the needle as deep as he can stand in his finger before Sherlock takes it away, doesn’t clean it.

When he closes his eyes, he never opens them again.


End file.
